"...Who is the honest man? He that doth still and strongly good pursue, to God, his neighbor, and himself most true..." Constancy by George Herbert...

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Not about me but we...

Did you see the you see the Sienna-Ohio State game last Thursday night? It would not surprise me if you didn’t, it was a first round game in the NCAA men’s finals last Thursday night. Number 9 cede Sienna beat Number 8 cede Ohio State and will face Louisville this evening.I saw this snippet of a highlight from that game. Right as Sienna sank the winning shot at the last second in the last overtime, the camera pans over to their bench just as the team jumps up . Behind them, another student stands up behind the bench, pulls out a big yellow poster board with—you guessed it—John 3:16.He didn’t have it long. This big, bald security guard stepped up, ripped it out of his hands and folded it up and threw it away. It’s not the guard was some atheist anti-John 3:16-sign enforcer. NCAA rules don’t allow any signs, religious or otherwise, at a tournament game.Still, I want to say to the kid who smuggled in his sign: “You've got the wrong verse! If you're going to go through all the work of smuggling in the sign, at least have the correct verse!”We all know—or many of us do, anyway—John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to the end that all that believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”This is the slogan-passage for many Christians. To them it describes the core of Christian faith. But we forget about the rest of the passage, and its context. This is why if a kid was going to hold up bible-verse sign it should say “John 3:17.” And that reads: “Indeed, God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order than it might be saved through him.”In other words, God’s salvation is not about “me” but about “we.”Read the rest of Andrew Gern's post here...